Various: Silhouettes & Statues (A Gothic Revolution 1978 - 1986) 2017

 

Gothic rock (also called goth rock or goth) is a style of rock music that emerged from post-punk in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The first post-punk bands which shifted towards dark music with gothic overtones include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure.
                                                                                                             

The genre itself was defined as a separate movement from post-punk. Gothic rock stood out due to its darker sound, with minor or bass chords, reverbs, dark arrangements or dramatic and melancholic melodies, having inspirations in gothic literature allied with themes such as sadness, existentialism, nihilism, dark romanticism, tragedy, melancholy and morbidity. These themes are often approached in a poetic way.
                                                                                                      

THE SISTERS OF MERCY

The sensibilities of the genre led the lyrics to represent the evil of the century and the romantic

THE CURE

idealization of death and the supernatural imagination. Gothic rock then gave rise to a broader goth subculture that included clubs, fashion and publications in the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 21st century.
                                                                

BAUHAUS

Exhaustive and elegantly housed collection of the early years of UK Goth Rock from 1978 to 1986, presented in a deluxe hardback format with an overview and pen pictures of all the artists featured. Louder Than War’s Ian Canty feels a chill in his gall-bladder and looks at the development of a scene out of its Post Punk origins, often featuring some very unlikely Goths indeed.
                                                                             

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Goth, it’s a rum business! Emerging from the UK Post Punk scene and early on labouring under the

handle of “Positive Punk”, it quickly morphed from low-key beginnings that centred round the Batcave Club in London to become a worldwide phenomenon. On its way it took in many other musical modes and transformed them, each one of these styles mutated for their own macabre purposes. This made it difficult to pin down as a musical movement, which I suppose could well be in its favour. Which brings us to Silhouettes And Statues.
                                                                   

ALIEN SEX FIEND

According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, standard musical fixtures of gothic rock include "scything guitar patterns, high-pitched basslines that often usurped the melodic role [and] beats that were either hypnotically dirgelike or tom-tom heavy and 'tribal'". Reynolds described the vocal style as consisting of "deep, droning alloys of Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen". Several acts used drum machines downplaying the rhythm's backbeat.
                                                             

Gothic rock typically deals with dark themes addressed through lyrics and the music's atmosphere. The poetic sensibilities of the genre led gothic rock lyrics to exhibit literary romanticism, morbidity, existentialism, religious symbolism or supernatural mysticism. Gothic rock is an offshoot of post-punk and, according to AllMusic, "took the cold synthesizers and processed guitars of post-punk and used them to construct foreboding, sorrowful, often epic soundscapes." Early gothic rock had introspective or personal lyrics, but according to AllMusic, "its poetic sensibilities soon led to a taste for literary romanticism, morbidity, religious symbolism, and/or supernatural mysticism."
                                                                  

AND ALSO THE TREES

Of course elements of Gothic pre-dated Punk, with death-obsessed ’50s US Rockabilly perhaps starting the ball rolling. In the next decade the Velvet Underground and even the Doors played a part in the development of a Gothic aesthetic, along with Alice Cooper’s more comic-book horror spin on the Stooges stage craft. These trail-blazers remained at the forefront of Goth’s muse and Nico flies their flag with Saeta on Silhouettes, but it is the UK outcrop we’re mainly dealing with here.
                                                          

DANIELLE DAX

Where do you start to review 83 tracks?
The answer is, you don’t even try. Allow me to do a swift roll call of the big hitters contained on this majestic release for whom I won’t even attempt to discuss in further detail; Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, The Mission, PIL, The Cure and Fields of the Nephilim. However, the album cleverly circumnavigates the well-known hits and opts to place an emphasis on early or little-known tracks instead.
                                                              

DALIS CAR

Take All About Eve by way of example, a band often derided in goth circles for being far too twee and folky. ‘D For Desire’, their debut single. is totally off-kilter when compared to their later output and made me wish they had never signed to a major label.
                                                                    

The same can also be said of Adam And The Ants ‘Tabletalk‘ and ‘Q Quarters‘ by The Associates. No,

LOVE AND ROCKETS

the real sensory joy of Silhouettes & Statues is the love, care and attention which has clearly been poured into collating such a unique, exhaustive narrative of the era and must surely become the de facto starting point for all future generations wishing to investigate their goth heritage.
                                                               

Every track in the collection was recorded in the days when the internet was simply somewhere a Yorkshire fisherman put his catch, there has been no gravestone left unturned in the pursuit of creating a definitive musical mausoleum.
                                                                             

JENE LOVES JEZEBEL

Far from being a depressing sub-culture, this collection demonstrates just how creative and experimental this period in our musical history was to become. ‘Fiends‘ by Portion Control could easily have provided a blueprint for much of what was to follow from Aphex Twin and ‘Among The Ruins‘ from Bushido is surely an embryonic seed for what was to later become OK Computer.
                                                                                       

FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM

Naturally, there is the occasional therapeutic descent into hell, don’t listen to Clock DVA with the lights off, ‘Female Mirror‘ makes The Cure sound as upbeat as The Beach Boys. Elsewhere, there is plenty of invective to enjoy with both Brigandage and Anorexic Dread rounding up the post-punk embers and laying them to rest.
                                                                 

DEAD CAN DANCE

5CD + 48pp A5 book format contains many artists’ own sleevenotes, previously unseen photographs

PLAY DEAD

and essay from Natasha Scharf (The Art Of Gothic, Worldwide Gothic, Prog, Metal Hammer). Curated and designed by the people who brought you Scared To Get Happy, Still In A Dream, Close To The Noise Floor and many more excellent and extensive box sets. An intense journey through the shadowy underside of the UK’s post-punk alternative culture.
                                                       

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED

In the wake of punk rock, and after twenty years of carefully packaged pop and rock fantasy, cold reality finally kicked in the doors of the music industry. Overnight, a generation raised on aspirational boy meets girl tales, the clichés of rock ‘n roll excess and the unreachable otherworldliness of glam and progressive rock were freed to pour truth and their everyday experience into their music.
                                                            

THE DAMNED

In no time at all, a dark, brutal sensibility crept into the UK’s post-punk wasteland, reflecting the

FLESH FOR LULU

political, social and spiritual situation. Thoughts and feelings that pop music had repressed for decades were at last unleashed as the anger, the frustration, the self-loathing and the disenchantment flowed.
                                                           

THE THEATRE OF HATE

The instrumentation, imagery, appearance and attitudes varied wildly from tribe to tribe in this primordial, year zero atmosphere, but by the late 1970s a gothic sensibility had taken root which reset the boundaries of musical and lyrical expression forever…
                                                        

THE MISSION

Extensive 5CD/book set exploring the evolution of the Goth movement, from the glacial post-punk of

THE MARCH VIOLETS

the late 1970s through positive punk and into the Batcave era, dark electronica and beyond. . Features over 80 classics, rarities, album tracks & hidden gems from The Cure, Joy Division, Sisters Of Mercy, PiL, The Birthday Party, Adam And The Ants, The Mission, Southern Death Cult, Fields Of The Nephilim, and many more.

Various – Silhouettes & Statues (A Gothic Revolution 1978 - 1986)
Label: Cherry Red – CRCDBOX34
Format: 5 x CD, Compilation
Country: UK & Europe
Released: Jun 30, 2017
Genre: Rock
Style: New Wave, Post-Punk, Goth Rock, Dark Wave.
Total Time: 180:59 min
Total Size: MP3: 837 MB / Flac: 2,2 GB

DISC ONE

01. Joy Division – Shadowplay    3:53
02. The Birthday Party – Release The Bats  2:32
03. Rema-Rema – Rema-Rema    4:26
04. Paranoia – Shattered Glass    3:05
05. Section 25 – Charnel Ground    3:50
06. The Sisters Of Mercy – Floorshow    3:40
07. Clock DVA –  Female Mirror    4:59
08. UK Decay – The Black Cat    2:26
09. Alien Sex Fiend – Dead And Reburied    6:01
10. Love And Rockets – Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven    6:38
11. The Associates – Q Quarters    4:56
12. In Excelsis – Carnival Of The Gullible    3:50
13. Nevilluxury – Feels Like Dancing Wartime    2:44
14. Flesh For Lulu – Vaguely Human    3:24
15. The March Violets – Crow Baby    4:03
16. All About Eve – D For Desire    4:13
17. Folk Devils – Beautiful Monster    4:39

MP3 @ 320 Size: 168 MB
Flac  Size: 454 MB

DISC TWO

01. Public Image Limited – Flowers Of Romance    2:53
02. Danielle Dax – Bed Caves    3:12
03. The Southern Death Cult – Moya    4:41
04. 1919 – Caged    2:29
05. The Cure – The Hanging Garden    4:33
06. The S-Haters – Solitary Habit    4:11
07. Dead Can Dance – The Arcane    3:47
08. Years On Earth – Saving Face    2:54
09. In The Nursery – Breach Birth    6:27
10. Play Dead – The Tenant    5:39
11. Part 1 – Ghost    4:26
12. 13th Chime – Cuts Of Love    5:09
13. The Tempest – Ice Cold In    3:18
14. Screaming Dead – Night Creatures    4:01
15. Bushido – Among The Ruins    5:51
16. Portion Control – Fiends    3:25
17. Actifed – Creation    3:08

MP3 @ 320 Size: 161 MB
Flac  Size: 447 MB

DISC THREE

01. Adam And The Ants – Tabletalk    5:34
02. Balaam And The Angel – Darklands    3:36
03. The Legendary Pink Dots – Love Puppets    6:57
04. Artery – Into The Garden    4:52
05. Salvation –  Girlsoul    4:47
06. The Chameleons – In Shreds    4:00
07. Schleimer K – Fugitive Kind    4:15
08. The Bolshoi – By The River    5:43
09. Gene Loves Jezebel – Screaming For Emmalene    3:00
10. Lowlife – Gallery Of Shame    5:19
11. And Also The Trees – Out Of The Moving Life Of Circles    3:59
12. Siiiii – Is Still    4:24
13. Tabathas Nightmare – Heroin (Live At The Batcave)    3:35
14. Brigandage – Angel Of Vengeance    5:37
15. Penetration – Stone Heroes    3:14
16. The Rose Of Avalanche – LA Rain    7:31

MP3 @ 320 Size: 184 MB
Flac  Size: 489 MB

DISC FOUR

01. Furyo – Legacy    3:59
02. The Mission – Stay With Me    4:06
03. Nico – Saeta    3:50
04. In Camera –  Fragments Of Fear    4:24
05. Dance Chapter – Anoymity    4:51
06. Ausgang – Sink Into You    2:49
07. Cocteau Twins – In Our Angelhood    2:59
08. Sunglasses After Dark – Morbid Silence    4:03
09. Fields Of The Nephilim – Trees Come Down    6:31
10. Anorexic Dread – Tracey's Burning    9:35
11. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Take It All    2:54
12. Tones On Tail – Burning Skies    6:26
13. Blood And Roses – Spit Upon Your Grave    4:15
14. The Threat – High Cost Of Living    4:18
15. I'm Dead – Storm Pause    2:54
16. Zero Le Creche – Last Year's Wife    3:53

MP3 @ 320 Size: 173 MB
Flac  Size: 459 MB

DISC FIVE

01. Bauhaus – Stigmata Martyr    3:44
02. The Wake – Patrol    3:33
03. Specimen – Returning From A Journey    4:09
04. Theatre Of Hate – Original Sin    3:33
05. Attrition – Birthrite    3:04
06. Sad Lovers And Giants – Things We Never Did    4:08
07. The Damned – Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde    4:32
08. Gloria Mundi – The Hill    5:27
09. Dalis Car – His Box    4:43
10. Inca Babies – The Diseased Stranger's Waltz    5:30
11. Death Cult – Ghost Dance    3:57
12. Modern Eon – Euthenics    3:09
13. Ritual – Mind Disease    2:50
14. Skeletal Family – She Cries Alone    5:18
15. Bone Orchard – Jack    3:46
16. Hula – Ghost Rattle    3:56
17. Rubella Ballet – Twister    8:54

MP3 @ 320 Size: 179 MB
Flac  Size: 466 MB